


The 5 Times John Watson and Sherlock Holmes Almost Met, and the 1 Time They Actually Did

by chainsaw_poet



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-11
Updated: 2010-10-11
Packaged: 2017-10-12 14:50:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chainsaw_poet/pseuds/chainsaw_poet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by a prompt from the kink meme at http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com. The title, really, says it all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Four and Seven

He has been made to sit under the shade of the parasol wearing a t-shirt because, following the hour he spent with Mycroft fishing shrimps from rock pools, his shoulders have taken on a pinkish hue. It is tiresome. Mycroft is allowed to go off, sans t-shirt, and play cricket with the older boys at the other end of the beach. He has to sit quietly next to Mummy where the sand is not damp enough to pack properly, so that, when he turns the castles out of his bucket, they crumble instantly.

From where he sits, he can see a boy and girl with sandy hair, who must be brother and sister, playing together. It's the sort of playing that Mycroft makes him engage in sometimes; games that he doesn't really enjoy, like being tied up, or used as a lookout, or experimented on. The girl is bigger than the boy, although not as big as Mycroft. She is chewing thoughtfully on the end of her damp ponytail, as she covers her younger brother up to the neck in sand, sculpting it carefully over his limbs.

"Harry, I want to get out now," the boy calls out. "The sand feels horrible."

He read a story in _The Telegraph_ the week before they left for the holiday about a little girl dying at the beach when she was digging a hole and the sand collapsed over her. The coastguard who was interviewed said that children shouldn't be allowed to dig deep holes or bury each other in the sand. He thinks that the big girl probably didn't read The Telegraph and needs to be told she's doing something wrong. Putting down the bucket, he only takes a few paces before Mummy's voice calls him back.

"Sherlock, darling, stay in the shade. We don't want you to get sunstroke."

So he sits down again, but he doesn't make anymore sandcastles. He just stares at the boy and girl as she piles up more sand, and he keeps asking for the game to finish. He keeps watching because then, if anything does go wrong, he can tell someone and no one will get hurt.

But he doesn't have to watch for long. Soon, a man, who also has sandy hair, comes over to the two children. He laughs for a moment, and then tells Harry that she has to dig her brother out because its time to go home. It does not take long to dig the boy out; he is not, apparently, buried that deeply. He watches as the boy and the girl pack away their buckets and deflate their inflatable dinghy.

He does not think that Mummy would let him play with one of those.


	2. Thirteen and Sixteen

"Stop biting your nails, John."

They have been sitting in the car with the radio on for fifteen minutes. The exam doesn't start for another half an hour, but Mum didn't know how long the drive to the school would take, so they'd left lots of extra time. Too much extra time, as it happens, and he assumes that Mum feels even less confident than he does about going in to ask if there is somewhere they could wait and have a cup of tea.

Silently, he realises that he and Mum have agreed to just follow what everyone else does, because neither of them has any experience of places like this outside of watching _Tom Brown's Schooldays_ on ITV with a Sunday roast on their laps. He'd never have even been here today if it wasn't for the fact that, at parents' evening last June, Mr Black, his chemistry teacher, had asked Dad if the family had thought about sending John somewhere a bit better for his A Levels. Because John was very bright, Mr Black said, and was going to do very well wherever he was. But if he wanted to be a doctor then it wouldn't hurt to see if he might move to a school that would help him do even better still. With John's marks and the fact that he was in the county rugby team, he might even get a scholarship and that would look very good indeed on university applications. Medicine, Mr Black had said, was very competitive these days.

Then Dad saw the advert for the scholarship competition in _The Times_ and now he is here, sitting in the car in his school uniform and waiting.

He is hot and uncomfortable in his uniform; it is only two weeks into term and he's still not really used to wearing it after six weeks off. But not as uncomfortable as the boys from this school must be. He only has to wear a shirt, a tie and a jumper on top of his grey trousers and Clarks shoes. The three boys that he is watching are wearing collars that look like something from Charles Dickens, and long dark coats. They are also wearing straw hats. The hats seem summery and clash strangely with the heavy fabric of the rest of their uniforms. He knows that if he and his mates saw those boys on the high street they'd kick the shit out of them. Or at least, they'd say that was what they were going to do.

He probably wouldn't get in a real fight with these boys though, because they look a few years younger than him. At first, he'd thought they were all talking together, but now, watching them more closely, he can seen that two of them are talking but one is silent. The silent boy is standing very still, arms stiffly by his side. He is pale and his wildly curling hair looks like it's rebelling against being cut so that it's above his collar. The boy isn't looking down, but he isn't exactly looking at the other boys either. More like, looking though them.

He tries to concentrate on all the things he will need to remember for the exam; the equations for trigonometry, the characters in Macbeth, the flame test colours for different metals. But he keeps being distracted by the boys, who he is now mentally dividing into the two and the one that he is calling the pale boy. The two are laughing, and the pale boy isn't, but then the pale boy says something and the two stop laughing. They now look very angry indeed and he sure that there is going to be a fight, but then in the distance a bell rings. The two boys ignore it for a moment, staying where they are and looking menacing, but then they lose their nerve and run. The pale boy calmly walks off in the opposite direction.

Something is stuck in his throat and he swallows hard. He has a palpable and insistent sense of wanting to be anywhere but here.

"Mum." His voice is almost a whisper as he looks up at her. "I don't want to do the exam." Mum looks at him sadly for a moment and then she pats him on the arm.

"That's fine, love." He can sense relief in her voice. "That's absolutely fine."

He does not look back at the school as they drive away.


	3. Eighteen and Twenty-One

He has spent the past two weeks in the British Library, arriving when it opens and leaving at closing time. It took him only six days to complete both the required and recommended reading lists set by his tutors. In the instant that he closed the last book and placed a deliberate tick in black ink next to its title on the list, he had felt an overwhelming sense of disappointment. It had all been easy and, an even bigger sin, it had all been boring. He had had such high expectations of Cambridge. He had allowed himself to believe that, whilst the university might be mostly populated with the imbeciles that made up his classmates at school, there would be a least a few people who were like him. The evidence of the reading list suggested that this would not be the case.

The only consolation for a summer of giddy anticipation being transformed into a summer of bitter resignation is his discovery of the British Library Sciences Reading Room. Despite having finished the reading list days ago, he is still here, drinking information with an eager thirst that most young men his age would reserve for pints of lager. He had begun in the chemistry section, that being his chosen subject, methodically selecting books and carefully filling in the required deposit slips that took the place of the volume on the shelf.

However, his technique has now become more haphazard. After two days of chemistry, he found himself drawn towards the medical section of the library, his attention fixated by books on anatomy, physiology, and pathology. Rather than taking a linear path through a topic, he decided to pluck books of the shelves spontaneously, absorb what they have to offer and cast them aside. His handwriting on the deposit slips became scrawled, then illegible and then, today, it finally disappears altogether when he decides that following library procedures is tedious and a waste of his precious time.

It is forensics that intrigues him the most. Of course, he knew before he started reading that one can discover all sorts of things from a dead body; when they died, what killed them, what they had to eat three hours before they met their end. But he hadn't known how one discovered these things, and he is captivated by the barrage of tests to which it is possible to subject a corpse. He is even more thrilled by the prospect of carrying out these tests himself, and begins to wonder how easy it would be to get his hands on a dead body, or what it would take to talk his way into a mortuary.

He is so rapt in this new-found fascination with the processes of death that he doesn't notice the young man who is scouring the shelf behind him from which he took the forensics textbook. He doesn't notice him until the young man, who is wearing a rugby shirt with the number five on the back of it, swears a little too loudly for the hush of the library, snatching his attention away from the diagram of contusions consistent with blows by blunt objects. He does not see the man's face, only his messy light-brown hair.

He is not the only one who is distracted. A blonde girl of the type that would probably be called pretty and who is standing next to the rugby-shirted man, smiles at him and playfully places a finger to her lips.

"Library!" she hisses, teasingly.

"Sorry," rugby-shirt mutters. "But someone's taken the book I need and not left a slip. I'll have to call it from the reserve now and that takes hours."

Silently and with a smirk, he draws the book closer to himself and leans over it, breathing in its contents and keeping it to himself.


	4. Twenty-Three and Twenty-Six

The night shifts are always the worst, and Saturday nights are the worst of the worst. Saturday night shifts revolve around the effects of alcohol. There are the patients who have drunk too much. There are the patients who have drunk too much and fallen over. There are the patients whose partner has drunk too much and decided to knock them about a bit.

There are also the patients who have the misfortune to have chosen a Saturday to simply fall ill, or to have an accident that does not involve six pints and a double-vodka. They have to sit in A&E for even longer than usual, watching doctors ignore them and lavish attention on the pissed-up members of society. Therefore, they are always particularly nasty when it comes to their turn.

Then there are the patients who have taken drugs. These can be the same patients that have drunk too much. If that's the case, then often it's the first time they've taken the substance; it's a Saturday night, someone offers it to them and they want to have a bit more fun than usual. But they aren't really ready for what that bit more fun actually entails and sometime after midnight they're screaming at their friends to call an ambulance. The patients who have taken it before, and especially the ones who are habitual users, don't tend to mix it with drink. They know what happens. They aren't scared and screaming when they come in, and in that case it's usually serious.

He doesn't know how serious it will be with this next one, the patient the nurse has just pointed out to him as she hands him the notes. He almost looks the respectable type. The person accompanying him is definitely respectable; expensive suit, clean shoes and an umbrella clutched in his left hand. His right hand rests on the far shoulder of the patient, cradling him. He allows the other man to bury his head into the shoulder of the expensive suit, although the looks that he throws to the patient are hardly sympathetic. As a pair, they radiate the sense that this is not the first time they have been sat in A&E on a Saturday night, and they don't imagine it will be the last.

He has developed a habit of reading notes from the bottom up, because that way he knows what is wrong with the patient first. Then, he finds out their history and he learns their name last, so he has a hope of remembering it when he walks over to greet them. Reading this way, the first word he hits of any note is cocaine; it seems probable that whatever the patient has taken hasn't been cut properly, likely as not too much Novocaine added to stretch it. He looks over at the pair again. The cocaine and the expensive clothes imply that they are city boys; but city boys are usually accompanied by girlfriends not each other. Besides, the patient's hair, a mass of unruly curls, probably wouldn't sit well in a bank or a law firm. And the clothes, whilst being expensive, aren't showy. The patient wears a long dark coat and his escort a dark grey suit; they are garments more suited to blending in than standing out.

Before he can read on and confirm his suspicion that this is not the first time the patient has been admitted for drug-related issues, he feels a tap on his shoulder and the notes are pulled out of his hand. Turning around, he finds himself looking at a senior consultant for the A&E department, whom he has only seen treating a patient once before.

"You must be due a break, John. I'll deal with this one."

He is due for a break, although that has meant nothing in the past. Still, whatever the reason, he is not going to turn down an offer like that when it arises. He lingers only long enough to see the consultant shake hands with the man in the suit, and swiftly usher the pair behind a curtain.


	5. Twenty-eight and Thirty-one

"What do you mean I can't look at the crime scene? Is this that man Anderson again?" He watches Lestrade take a deep breath before giving what he obviously intends to be a considered response.

"No one can look at the crime scene. Major Oliphant, the man who is in charge of these barracks, informed me of that fact. He insists that any investigation that takes place is the responsibility of the Royal Military Police. He also assures me of his conviction that the tragedy that took place this evening was the result of no greater crime than ill-treating subordinates. The wounds were the accidental result of a training exercise that went too far." The clipped, military language sounds strange in Lestrade's voice.

"He's wrong. It's murder. It's the second murder."

"I know he's wrong, Sherlock. But they're closing ranks, don't you see?" The inspector is trying to keep things calm and professional. But he can tell that Lestrade is seething on the edge of a tirade of frustration by the way that he has to flick his lighter with his thumb three times before the flame shoots up and he can light his cigarette.

"Can we talk to the soldiers? The men that found the body?" Lestrade shakes his head and laughs bitterly.

"That's the last thing that Oliphant will let us do. I think that those men would very much like to talk to us."

"How do you know that?"

"My constable, the one that arrived first on the scene, was telling me about one of them. An army doctor, he thought, by the way the bloke was examining the body. Anyway, Oliphant, who arrived at the same time as this constable, started ordering this soldier to go back inside the barracks until the Military Police had come to seal the scene. This soldier tells Oliphant that this should never have been allowed to happen again, and that its murder and that something needs to be done. And he's shouting this, until Oliphant tells him to get inside, or he'll court martial him." Lestrade sucks hard on his cigarette and shakes his head as he exhales. "Of course, Oliphant will deny the exchange ever took place."

"As will the soldier if he wants to he keep his head." Lestrade nods darkly. "And so we wait?"

"Until the Redcaps have done their investigation. If they decide there is evidence of anything more than an accident, we can carry out our own investigation."

"But they won't."

"No, they won't." Lestrade offers him the packet of Benson and Hedges that is still in his left hand.

"No. I've given up." Lestrade raises his eyebrows, looking a little impressed as he replaces the cigarette carton in the pocket of his jacket.

"Come on. I'll give you a lift home. I came in my own car."

Sitting in the passenger side of Lestrade's sedan as they drive back into central London, he contemplates calling Mycroft to ask him to pull a few strings to allow him to investigate the case. He's not exactly sure how much sway Mycroft has in the armed forces, or how much sway Mycroft has altogether, but he thinks that it's a possibility. What stops him is not any apprehension about causing problems in the army, or causing a national scandal, but the fact that he is sure the case will turn out to be deeply boring. The exchange between Oliphant and the nameless army doctor suggests that at least one person is aware of who is responsible, and probably more. There'd be no challenge in this one.

Besides, he is sure that if the Army is as good at closing ranks as Lestrade gives them credit for, then they'll find their own way of dealing with the killer. And that nameless doctor will probably be sent somewhere where he can't cause any more trouble.


	6. Thirty-two and Thirty-five

"Who'd want me for a flatmate?"

The man in the lab at St Barts isn't exactly the answer that he'd pictured to the question that he'd posed to Mike earlier that day. The air of self-confidence and the expensive clothing seem to suggest that this was a man who would have no trouble finding a flat mate, if he even needs one at all. But there's something odd about the way he talks, clipped and standoffish; certainly not shy, but not exactly arrogant either.

And then when the question comes, "Afghanistan or Iraq?", for an instant he's so shocked that he can't think what to reply. Then there's the way that the man speaks to the young woman in the lab coat, who comes in bearing coffee as though it'll be the highlight of her day; he isn't cruel, but he's certainly tactless, and yet somehow the man gets away with it. Perhaps it's because he's handsome; tall and slim, with dark curls.

He knows that he should be annoyed, affronted even, at the way that the man makes no secret of knowing why he and Mike are there. The fact that his potential new flatmate is describing how he will play the violin and not speak for days as though these are issues that are not up for compromise should be enough to make him politely refuse any possibility of sharing accommodation. And if these warning signs are still not enough, he knows he should run far, far away from any man who tells him that he has left his riding crop in the mortuary.

But he doesn't run away and he doesn't want to run away. He is utterly fascinated. Not quite so captivated, however, that he can't ask a few questions of his own.

"Is that it?"

"Is that what?"

"We've only just met and we're going to go and look at a flat."

"Problem?"

"We don't know a thing about each other. I don't know where we're meeting. I don't even know your name."

Then it begins. The rapid speech, devoid of emotion, that lists every facet of his life. His career, his wound, Harry (it only takes him an instant to work out the reference to his brother; the mistake has been made before by people who knew him much better), Clara, his therapist, his leg. A large part of his existence, the parts that make up his whole, rattled off perfectly in less than a minute, by a man whose name he doesn't even know. He can't think of a response that would be even halfway adequate, and so he lets the man walk swiftly to the door, where the prospective flatmate gives his last parting shot.

"The name's Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221b Baker Street. Afternoon."

And, strange as it is, he feels as though he should have known this all along.


End file.
